Adobe AIR project - Questions

Hello I m here to solve any questions related to AIR in my mind.
I would start an offline project that consist of displaying and editing things in a db.I would like to develop this project over AIR and Action Script 3.I know that AS3 can handle Mysql but for running Mysql DB offline it would have a mysql server running on the machine...but here would like to create a db running with my AIR application and without have to install any mysql local server.
So witch type of DB or how can i create DB for AS3 use?
Maybe i can use xml as tables of DB and coding the xmls as they were db parts but the datas are very huge and this will not be easy to edit things in db with xml as tables
Thanks a lot

The AIR runtime includes the SQLite database engine, so if you want to use a database as part of your application that is the easiest way to do so. The documentation about the built-in database functionality is here:
Flex: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AIR/1.5/devappsflex/WS5b3ccc516d4fbf351e63e3d118676a5497-7fb4. html
Flash:http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AIR/1.5/devappsflash/WS5b3ccc516d4fbf351e63e3d118676a5497-7fb4 .html
HTML/JavaScript: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AIR/1.5/devappshtml/WS5b3ccc516d4fbf351e63e3d118676a5497-7fb4. html
In theory an AIR application can also communicate with any other type of database, assuming you find or write the code to perform that communication. For example, there is an open-source ActionScript library to directly access MySQL. However, as you point out, to use any server-based database you would need to have an instance of the database server running where the computer can access it.
Aside from SQLite, the only other file-based database system that I'm familiar with is Microsoft Access. (I'm sure there are others, but I just don't know their names.) I don't know of any existing projects to work with Access database files from AIR, but again I could have just missed something.

Similar Messages

Adobe AIR installation questions

Hi all,
I'm looking into the possibility of distributing an application with Adobe AIR and I've a few questions about the Adobe AIR installation process. Just to give you some background on the situation I'm in - if a user wants to use the service I'm working on, they need to install a binary application on their computer. We've a web site which communicates with this binary application. As the user as to install the binary application to begin with, we're beginning to look at AIR as a possible alternative to distributing the web content through a browser.
1. Adobe AIR installation requests that the user enters their computer password. Is there any way to retrieve this password from a separate installer? The binary application that we ask our users to install asks the user for their password and it would be nice to not ask the user to enter their password twice. Are there any possibilities for sharing this password between our binary application and the Adobe AIR installer?
2. If I sign up as a re-distributer of AIR, is the Adobe EULA which is displayed at the start of installation still necessary? I'm already displaying one EULA (with the binary application) and I'd prefer not to have to display two.
3. I'm assuming that there is no way to specify the directory into which I'd like the Adobe AIR runtime to be placed - can you confirm that Adobe AIR is always installed in the /Applications folder on mac and c:/Program Files on Windows?
This question goes out to Adobe AIR developers - If you have distributed your application with Adobe AIR, have you ever stumbled across the situation where a user has uninstalled the Adobe AIR runtime (either intentionally or unintentionally) and you are now left in a situation where a user cannot access your services because Adobe AIR is not installed on their computer. If so, are you aware of any usable fallbacks other than to tell customers that they have to have Adobe AIR installed to run the application?
Thanks
Sean

1: We are working on a method to use a local socket to communicate with an installed c# application on the users machine. The situation is very similar, however we store credentials encrypted and accessible to the installed binary. If those credentials do not exist the AIR app requests the user to input them and they are sent to the binary. These credentials are stored either per session, daily or forever per the user's preferences. We use this method to let AIR be the front end it was designed to be and leave all the heavy lifting OS / processor wise to the binary. Unsure if this would help but you can read a bit more on using local sockets here: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AIR/1.5/devappshtml/WS5b3ccc516d4fbf351e63e3d118666ade46-7caf. html
2: The EULA is still required as the End User has to accept it. If there's a way around that, I'm not aware.
3: The installation directory can be changed by the user unless you are performing silent installs (available when you sign a redistribution agreement). I don't recommend relying on the installation directory never changing.
Try using nativePath to determine where your program location is: (javascript)
//application directory
var file = air.File.applicationDirectory.resolvePath("testfile.html");
air.trace(file.nativePath);
//application storage directory
var file = air.File.applicationStorageDirectory.resolvePath("testfile.html");
air.trace(file.nativePath);
4: I've faced the problem where the AIR runtime is not available, but we always fall back on the badge there. For what it's worth it's pretty handy at detecting requirements and getting them to the user.
hope that helps

Adobe AIR help; question regarding search criteria with multibyte characters

Hi,
I created Adobe AIR application with Robohelp 9 (using FM 10 files as source, and texts are written in Japanese and English),
and happend to find that search function in AIR application doesn't catch keywords correctly.
For example,
1. If you type "文字" and "スタイル" with single byte space in search window, the result appears for both "文字" and "スタイル".
2. If you type "文字" and "スタイル" with double byte space in search window, the result doesn't match for anything.
3. If you type "文字スタイル" (in one word) in search window, the result doesn't match for anything.
Same thing happens for the case "文字種" (literally, "文字"+"種", the meaning is almost the same).
But, if you type search words which is all in Katakana, the result seems to be fine.
Is there any limitation for multibyte characters support? Or, this behaviour is a feature??
If so, how can make AIR application "hit" correct words?
Thank you very much for your kind help in advance!

On this one your best course of action is to contact Adobe Support. They will likely require your project and there is one thing I would suggest you do first. Create a new project with just a few topics to prove the problem exists there as well. If it does it will be a simpler upload and you will know the problem is repeatable.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

Adobe Air Deployment Questions

I'm working on a commercial application. This application gets sold to customers, then deployed by various customers on whatever server they would like. It's a java backend flex front end. That said, for the web-app, since the swf file is housed in an application server within the same context/webroot as the server-side code, I can use relative url's.
For example, I can reference everything through /application/servlet/fun versus a full url http://10.0.0.0:808/application/servlet/fun.
This is a huge advantage for a web app because I can sell my product and they can deploy it wherever they want without me having to recompile or anything like that to account for new URLs.
Is there a way to do something similar with Adobe Air? I would like the use the Air environment for my next iteration of the app if possible because it gives added screen space (cuts out a lot of the browser stuff).
Currently, I put all my url's in .properties files. So, I would have a property like this:
MAIN_SERVLET=/application/servlet/fun (for example)
I could still have a concept like this, but how does a desktop app know the relative url path to the application server? Thus, I don't think you can use relative urls.
Please guide me in the right direction. I've been googling this all morning trying to understand the deployment process but I've found the documentation to be lacking.
Thanks!
Dan

This seems like a totally reasonable thing to do and seems like the path I will take.
Hi – I’m confused as to how this works.
I’ve followed this tutorial http://www.davidtucker.net/2008/01/10/air-tip-5-passing-arguments-to-an-application-on-ins tall/comment-page-1/#comment-3720
yet the BrowserInvokeEvent does not seem to be invoked. This is the application compiled into the .air app. On the preInitialize event, I do the following code:
private function initResources():void{
NativeApplication.nativeApplication.addEventListener(BrowserInvokeEvent.BROWSER_INVOKE, onInvokeEvent);
Swiz.loadBeans( [Beans] );
As you can see, I subscribe to the event and prepare my swiz framework beans. That’s all.
Having said that, the listener is never called. I have the following code in place to debug and see what data I’d be receiving from the flashvars.
private function onInvokeEvent(invocation:BrowserInvokeEvent):void {
Alert.show(”BrowserInvokeEvent handler”);
var arguments:Array = invocation.arguments;
for each ( var object in arguments ){
Alert.show(”argument is ” + object + ” or ” + object.data );
Am I missing a step such as recompiling the Badge.swf with the new contents of AIRBadge.as ?
Thanks in advance, I’m very stumped by this. Any guidance will be appreciated.
Dan

My Adobe Air project shown as open source...

Hey all,
wonder why when my project installed on my computer, when I open the installation directory I can see the *.html files source, *.js source.. and all files of my project?

The installation directory includes assets packaged with (and used by) the AIR application, including HTML, JS, SWF, and the application descriptor file. These assets are not compressed or obfuscated.

IOS and Android Native Scroll in Adobe AIR

I think it would be a great idea to implement the smooth scroll present in native iOS and Android applications for use in Adobe AIR projects.
Currently, the only way to obtain smooth scrolling lists with images is using StageWebView to show the image list in HTML format, and then awkwardly implement some JavaScript / AS3 communication functionality so the list in the StageWebView is interactive and can communicate with the main program. This is excessively complicated and very error prone (I've found some inexplicable JavaScript errors that only happen in the iPad, not in Android, and not in the PC!).
It would be way better to be able to skip all the StageWebView process altogether and being able to use a simple AS3 API to put any sprite/movieclip into a scrollable canvas which can be moved using the iOS native scroll.
Using Flash animation to simulate the scroll in a list with images is too slow in the iPad and gives a bad user experience. iPad users expect the native iPad scroll, not some poor jerky simulation. A native scroll is the only way to go.
And even though I talk about the iPad, this should be applicable to the native Android scroll, too.
Scrolling is a VERY BASIC action in a tablet, so this should be implemented as soon as possible.
Actually, I'm amazed we're already at AIR 3.0 beta, and still after all this time nobody thought of this. All sorts of fancy stuff is being added to AIR (hardware accelerated video, webcam and microphone access, etc...) but still something as basic and important as a smooth scroll, which every tablet user expects, is still not possible in Adobe AIR. We either have to implement some slow Flash animated scroll, or use the extremely complicated StageWebView with JavaScript/AS3 communication approach (I'm using a third party library called StageWebViewBridge for the JS/AS3 interoperations, which is great, but still, it's a far from ideal solution, since it's pretty fiddly and the JavaScript code doesn't always work properly in iOS).

Hi again jackson@mja.
I've given your scroll component a try just for some static texts, and I've found quite a few important bugs:
1. If the referenced sprite/movieclip is shorter than the scrolling area, it starts bouncing infinitely in a quite funny way,
    which renders the component unusable. Sometimes it even happens when the content is not shorter.
2. If your component is used inside another sprite/movieclip which is added dynamically from code ("addChild(mySprite);"),
    it doesn't work and stops with an error, because the EventListener for mouseDownHandler is being added to this.stage
    in the constructor, but a dynamic movieclip doesn't have access to the stage while in the constructor step (unless it is
    already in the stage added in the Flash IDE, such as in your FLA example). To fix this, I've added the following code
    to the ScrollArea() constructor:
this.addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);
this.addEventListener(Event.REMOVED_FROM_STAGE, close);
    And then I've added the following listener functions:
private function init(event:Event):void {
this.removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);
this.stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, this.mouseDownHandler);
private function close(event:Event):void {
this.stage.removeEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, this.mouseDownHandler);
3. Also, the scrollbar is only correctly rendered if the scroll area is located at the up and left corner of the stage. To put text somewhere else, the component must be put inside a movieclip.
4. This is not really important, but I've found the following variables are never user and so I've removed these lines:
var xy:Point = this.localToGlobal(new Point(this.x, this.y));
var wh:Point = this.localToGlobal(new Point(this.width, this.height));
var sign:int = sign(obj[i]);
I hope this can help you improve your classes.
Best regards,
OMA2k

Adobe AIR support for Windows RT and USB

We want to develop an cross platform application. We found that Adobe AIR supports cross platform development for Windows, iOS and Android.
We wanted to know wheather
1) reading and writing to USB port is possible with Adobe AIR?
2) Adobe AIR has support for Windows RT development?
Thanks in advance.

I wrote before about my concerns with Adobe AIR, but here is a short summary:
- no road map and no clear plans for the platform,
- support of new devices is often late, Intel chipsets are not supported on Android,
- debugging on a device is a pain,
- inadequate build times for iOS, app package is quite large,
- list of mobile UI components is very limited and UI experience is far from native,
- native extensions are a possibility but still far from perfect (imagine using three very different development platforms all in one app), no debugging,
- performance is not good if you use a lot of Spark components in your app,
- Flash Builder is pretty bad as the development environment,
- ActionScript3 is a poor, outdated language that encourages bad coding practices.
I ruled out HTML5 frameworks for the same reason as you stated above. Last few months I've been working with Xamarin MonoTouch and I think it is perfect for my projects. 100% native UI experience, about 80% of the code is shared among the platforms, iOS, MacOSX, Android and Windows 8/RT are supported. Took me about 2 months to convert my 2Mb ActionScript Adobe AIR project to Xamarin MonoTouch (iOS). The entire process was fun and painless. Now thinking to port to MacOSX and Android. My iOS app is already at the App Store, no major complains so far.
On a down side, Xamarin is expensive for an indie developer with low revenues. You need to pay $300 per year per each platform (iOS, Android, Mac). Plus, you need to develop UI layer separately for each platform, so only part of the code is shared. But I decided it is a way to go for my projects and it's been a very positive experience so far.
As for my professional development, Xamarin offers quite a bit more as well. I get to work with C#, .NET, iOS SDK, Android SDK all in one platform. With Adobe tools you only get to know ActionScript and Flex/Spark framework. Very rarely I see that as a desired qualification. It is like a trap. Your boss tells you to develop a few projects with Adobe tools, it sucks you in for a few years and suddenly you realize that your market value declined dramatically and there is no easy way out of this mess.

Questions about Adobe AIR and FLV license model

I'm currently looking for a game development framework which I can use for a fan-project in my spare time and also for commercial projects for the company I'm working for.
I think that the Citrus Engine which is open source and based on Apache Flex/Adobe AIR/Starling/Away3D/Box2d/Nate might be a good choice.
But I'm really confused about the license model of Adobe AIR and its runtime distribution.
Do I have to pay a license fee or royalties for my games (which include the AIR runtime in order to be stand-alone-apps) when I publish them?
If so, how much are these license fees/royalties?
Does this also concern free apps?
What is the name of the license which I would have to request from Adobe in order to publish my games?
Do I need several licenses when publishing an app on multiple AppStores (Apple/Google/Amzaon) or desktop distribution platforms (Steam/GOG)?
Are there further licensing obstacles which I have to keep in mind when using Flex/AIR for (commercial) game development?
By the way - the FAQ on the product page (http://www.adobe.com/products/air/faq.html) isn't really helping on this topic:
"How much does Adobe AIR cost?" -> "The Adobe AIR runtime and AIR SDK are free for most users."
This answer leaves me with the question: Am I belonging to the "most users" or not?
Therefore it isn't meaningful at all.
I'm also thinking about adding short video sequences as FLVs to the games.
If I understood correctly H.264 and MP3 are currently used as a standard for these video files but aren't free.
Is there a free alternative available for FLVs which can be used in combination with Adobe AIR?
Or did I get something wrong here and don't need to worry about getting sued when using these formats?
Thank you in advance for answering my numerous questions.

That's true.
I'm using a Dell Studio 1537 with 3GB of RAM and Intel Core 2 Duo and it's quick in Lr

Adobe AIR Launchpad - Not a valid archived project

I am trying to import the Adobe AIR Launchpad application into Adobe Flash Builder and receive "Not a valid archived project" error.
I am using;
Adobe AIR Launchpad      version   airlaunchpad_p8_3-0-1_081911
Adobe Flash Builder          version   4.6 (Flex 4.6.0)
Adobe Flash Player           version   11.4.402.287
Adobe AIR Runtime          version   3.5.0.600

You are talking about browser based AIR help and you are saying that in RoboHelp 9 you are not seeing AIR as an option to create the layout?
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

Overlaying adobe air sdk 13 for flex mobile project gives me error

After overlaying adobe air sdk in flash builder 4.6 i am getting this error in my flex mobile project "Could not resolve <s:ViewNavigatorApplication> to a component implementation.". I have followed the steps mentioned on adobe site. Can anyone please suggest me what i need to do in order to get this work.

You are probably missing the updated flash debug player that describes all the new methods to the application.
There is a good walkthrough of how to upgrade flash builder to a new library version, this is described in the first video of hsharma's starling tutorials.
Its very annoying though, i wish adobe would really build in a feature like this to update libraries.

Adobe AIR for Video Wall project - the right tool?

I need to decide whether Adobe AIR is the right tool for a Video Wall project. The Video wall would be one of only 4 installations.
It would need good offline capability.
The application would play back both canned video as well as twitter feeds.
The other option is to go all HTML with perhaps the Canvas element to display video, graphics.
I'm biased towards using Flash, AIR but am open to new ideas.
What are the pros, cons of each approach?

Pros of the Adobe route would be a little more control and reliability. You can easily go fullscreen, preload other videos easily in the background and display them on the hardware GPU decoded StageVideo (with the right video card, almost all of them at this point). Twitter feed loading would have some robust error handling to assure it goes smoothly but if you need offline capability you'll need some canned material for the feeds in that situation.
HTML can go fullscreen but the caveat would be drawing your twitter feed over the video at that point. Because it's fullscreen I don't believe you can have your text over it from a <video> element but you'd need to use <canvas>'s fullscreen and actually mux the text into the video.
The long haul of Adobe's roadmap clearly states video and games are the future of FP and AIR. I've done tons of kiosks in Flash and AIR, many of which just act as a video wall, attracting people to very large screens. I've had nothing but success doing this. I'd only even approach HTML5 if you have some reason to desire to put this on the web, and even then, Flash is still fine in that situation too.

Doki, one of the biggest Adobe Air for iOS projects, released yesterday

I am proud to present one of the biggest Adobe Air for iOS projects, that was released yesterday. Amazingly, the project completed in less that a year. Doki is a unique modern method of learning the basics of a foreign foreign language without the use of grammar and writing. Through colourful animated scenarios and characters, Doki brings to life a number of languages through real life situations, humour and interactive exercises. Exclusively designed for the iPad 2, New iPad, and iPhone 4S, Doki teaches five different languages: English, French, German, Iberian Spanish and Latin American Spanish. Each language has two levels: Doki and Doki Further. Both levels have been designed to teach the basics of these languages so that you can communicate with confidence. In Doki, a beginner’s level, the learner navigates through 14 chapters or ‘places’ in Doki City, listens and repeats the phrases and then solves simple interactive exercises. Each chapter is divided into lessons (a total of 51) that present key words and phrases in English and the other languages Doki covers. Doki Further, a more advanced beginner’s level, consists of 9 chapters with 28 lessons that take place in Doki City.
The development of Doki is based entirely on Adobe Air . The result is spectacular. With a development team that consisted of 5 programmers, 2 designers, 3 language specialists, one assistant programmer, plus a team of 4 testers, the gigantic project of 14 apps was completed in less than a year, resulting in very low development costs!
Please visit http://www.dokispeak.com for further details.

Pretty cool.

Change Encore Project into a adobe air desktop application with password

Good afternoon,
I am trying to find a a way that i can change or inport a Encore project into a adobe air desktop application so that a can password protect it. I have a training simulator built in Encore that has a large number of menus and videos that i would like to tern into a tesk top application that i can password protect. Encore out puts this as a swf file. Is there any way to do this? I have bin looking around an the web and can't seem to find any information on this kind of problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks,
Justin

Hi Justin,
ok, assuming that your external SWF tries to access some hosting application context (methods/properties) you could try:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<s:WindowedApplication xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
                            xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
                            xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx"
                            applicationComplete="applicationCompleteHandler(event)">
     <fx:Script>
          <![CDATA[
               import mx.controls.Alert;
               import mx.events.FlexEvent;
               private var loader:URLLoader = null;
               protected function applicationCompleteHandler(event:FlexEvent):void
                    loader = new URLLoader();
                    loader.dataFormat = URLLoaderDataFormat.BINARY;
                    var url:String = "MyApplication.swf";
                    loader.load(new URLRequest(url));
                    loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, loaderCompleteHandler);
                    loader.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, loaderErrorHandler);
               protected function loaderCompleteHandler(event:Event):void
                    // allow cross-scripting in case loaded content tries to access
                    // that context properties or methods
                    var context:LoaderContext = new LoaderContext();
                    context.allowCodeImport = true;
                    swfLoader.loaderContext = context;
                    swfLoader.load(loader.data);
                    cleanup();
               protected function loaderErrorHandler(errorEvent:IOErrorEvent):void
                    mx.controls.Alert.show(errorEvent.text, "ERROR");
                    cleanup();
               private function cleanup():void
                    loader.removeEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, loaderCompleteHandler);
                    loader.removeEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, loaderErrorHandler);
                    loader = null;
          ]]>
     </fx:Script>
     
     <s:SWFLoader width="100%" height="100%" id="swfLoader"/>
     
</s:WindowedApplication>
See that doc for some details "allowCodeImport":
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/fplayer10_1_air2_security_changes.html
note: I'm not sure if that would 100% work. I don't know what Encore authored .swf really do, for that you could ask on Encore forum:
http://forums.adobe.com/community/encore/encore_general
regards,
Peter

Adobe AIR Local Database Questions

Hi All,
I have very limited experience using Adobe AIR but it seems really cool since I'm plenty familiar with jQuery and other web technologies. We have a client interested in creating a desktop application that would rely on the local database feature of AIR. I have some questions though before I begin development.
I understand that AIR uses SQLite correct?
How robust is this database system? Some of the larger implementations of the AIR desktop software we're planning could have 500,000+ db records, is AIR cut out for this?
Where can I get some info on making use of the local database?
Here's some other non-DB related questions:
Can we send out software updates via CD for those without an internet connection at thier location?
Can AIR allow an application to interact with a USB device?
Thanks for all your help!!

Hi,
note: I'm not expert
#1
yes, AIR uses SQLite (3.6.*.? now one exactly knows as it is undocumented and sqlite_version() native function will throw runtime error to be handled)
#2
it depends for what purpose it will be used and how, yes? e.g.:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3160987/can-sqlite-handle-90-million-records
#3
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/articles/air_sql_operations.html
(User experience considerations with SQLite operations)
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=SQL_01.html
(docs)
#4
there is an option now to create native installer for platform which could be send off-line. It asks user to overwrite content if application is already installed, etc
#5
please define "interact" with USB? as disk or interface to talk with some device? Air itself cannot talk to low level ports but could start native process (NativeProcess) to some application/tool/process that could act as middle-tier between your application and usb:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/quickstart/articles/interacting_with_native_process.h tml
kind regards,
Peter

Pure ActionScript project for Adobe AIR

I've probably missed an obvious button or checkbox somewhere?
I've seen that when you create a new MXML project, you have
the option to target it at AIR. How do you do this for a pure
ActionScript project? (Or import an existing pure ActionScript
project that was written for AIR?)

Hi Mister Lafrance,
But, but it is same problem with creating project after build configure mxml to as. It can to show error - i have tried anything. It can not work while java runtime kills or show a lot of errors. Like this
Error: ...
at ...
at...
Please make sure my post!!! Sorry we must to configure manuel with RUN/Debug and adding as files....
Thanks!
Great nice tutorial! I hope because air developer are happy with Adobe Air Applications.
Suggestions:
new functions for executing applications like this flash.system.os.exec or flash.system.exec - If you want to build distributable Air Multi Applications.
Application Air should to make default directory for important distributing air installers. If you want to work 1 or more application in currect directory.
Like this:
/mycompany <- that is root directory was created by frist air installer.
./airapps - that new distributing air installer while you after start of air application
.//airapps/utilities/ <- example Air SDK should to copy into.. or nice air application like this Languagechooser or StyleChooser etc..
./airapps/softwares <- your built application like Widget Builder, Splashup or IconGenerater etc..
./airapps/config/ <- your currect saved config files. Important: all applications of distributing air applications will to load your currect config like Styles and Languages...
./myapp Binary <- create by air installer.
./shared/ <- assets,. libraries, templates and more files were created by Air installer.
Can you make sure for my idea of distributing air applications? We would to talk with new file for Air distributuing packages = *.airdp.
Thanks and best regards, SnakeMedia

Adobe AIR project - Questions

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